Withered
by SeraSearaSpin
Summary: He wasn't really a human, anyway. The fact that he'd lived through Yamori's tortures so far was only proof of that.


**I suppose I'll jump on the bandwagon of all the Kaneki-going-insane fics.**

**If only Yamori wasn't such a coward in the end, I would like him more. But begging? You definitely lose then. **

**It is now 2:33AM. I have no idea what I'm doing. There's probably a thousand errors in here...ugh, it's so early.**

**Review! :D**

* * *

"Aren't you hungry?"

Sound, light. A blazing white fire, and he was stretched over it like a chicken trussed up on a stick. His mouth gaped open, silent scream, and a collected voice spoke out from inside his head. Step back. The injection wasn't permanent, so another and another. _Drinks are on me!_ Blink and it's back again, for aren't the scalpels exciting? Wide, wide open.

_A mucous membrane! _Lizard eyes narrow with anticipation, tongue flicking out as if already tasting his blood. Yamori sliced open his back, and his nerves exploded. He saw red, then black, then white, then red again, and the other ghoul shrieked and cackled and screamed in ecstasy as his new toy bled. Meaty, nimble fingers reached into the slit, pushed apart the slick muscles, caressed the protruding white nubs of the spinal cord before digging deeper with stubby nails. It was obscene. After an eternity of eager hands inside his torso, Jason wrenched out an organ and freed it from its cage. Another explosion sent him reeling, dizzy in his bonds, and the distinctive shrieking laughter clattered in his ears.

His fingers dripped, pulpy veins like wires tangled with viscera, and in those hands was a clot of the darkest crimson he'd ever seen. It pulsed and wobbled like fine jelly, and his tormentor seemed almost entranced by the rich metal stink it gave off, waving it this way and that as if he'd never seen it before before bunching it in his hands and bringing it to his nose, inhaling, _inhaling-_ "Ah, this one's yours."

_Not this vile poison? _He'd been dreaming of plunging the knife through his stomach, plundering Dr. Kano'hard-won ghoul organs out ever since he was turned to one of the night creatures, never mind the tough girl and the old man and his best friend (_friend? no, of course not)_ the sack of meat that gave off such a smell, like fresh home cooking in a world of manure. _What a terrible meal. Not even more than a mouthful or so._

_Remember? Remember? Your apartment with the knife? It broke, but what about now?_ "Remember?" he babbled, and Yamori tilted his head on his wide neck and said almost sweetly, "What was that?" before taking his most _special_ pliers and kindly pinching off his windpipe. He felt metal pierce his skin as if it were fragile paper, and he gagged on the blood that welled up, both starving and full at the same time.

"Ah, I may have broken you," said the large man contemplatively, and humming a little tune, he whipped out a sort of bandage and bound up his neck while Kaneki struggled not to choke to death.

"Now, what do you say?"

Kaneki's head hung low. His hair swayed past his face, his ruined throat moved. When Yamori tilted his head up with one huge hand, his features were smeared with blood, eyes crazed. "Kill me."

"Incorrect!" He was almost cheerful at this, and grabbed his skull between his huge paws and _crushed_-

He screamed until blood flew out, screamed until the only thing leaving his mouth was blood, and Yamori lapped it up like a dog. His laughter could be heard, even by the Aogiri ghouls standing on the roof, and they shuddered at the sound.

(_Someone else heard, too, a boy with a needle and thread and an insatiable lust for a quinque._)

Blinded, flopping like a landed fish, _dying dying dying_ (as Nishiki had so eloquently put it the second time they'd met), he gaped, head deformed and squashed out of shape, and the little prick of the antidote to the Rc-suppressing injection was nothing. A snowflake in an avalanche.

The grinding of his bones and some of the emptiness where his organs had been, and his fingers and toes twisting out of his limbless wastes like stunted black trees. That was brought to his attention, and no sooner did numb, chapped lips spit numbers then Yamori's bear paws encircled his head.

"Eat, you little shit! Dinner time, half-breed, dear, open wide~"

And when he did not open his mouth, a metal clamp was wound around his head, drilled through the bottom of his skull, and he was mercifully released, flung out to the bounds of consciousness. The numbers slipping from his tongue were his only bond to the thin blazing thread, and from a distance, he watched. His jaws were literally cranked apart until the lower one gave a horrible crack, and then it hung free in a grotesque manner.

Yamori shoved his very own organ down his throat, and he choked and sputtered and begged and swallowed, because it was delicious, and he was so very hungry. Tender, sweet, meat, redolent with the warm ambrosia of blood. His own meat, and was that so bad?

"Please sit down, Kaneki."

Obediently sitting, _stupid boy_. If only all humans were as idiotic as he had once been, perhaps they would crowd up to him like sheep. Pick them up by the handful, gobble them like popcorn. Break all their fingers right _off-_

_ (snap)_

And wouldn't that too be grand? His abused throat rasped, forcing sounds past the rich meat he digested, and they were not sounds a human would make. "But you're _not _a human, ridiculous boy," Rize whispered in his ear, molding herself to his back. Her body was still the one that had attracted him those years and weeks ago, a sensual flowing whip of a woman, and even if she was only a figment, the way she wrapped herself around him made him feel warm. "You're not even _close_ to human anymore. Why not relinquish it? What have _they_ done for you? They are only cattle, dumb animals, existing to fulfill our desires." Her breath was warm on his cheek; her hair a silken curtain over his shoulder, and she was soft, so _soft_. Surely she would also be delicious, as well.

"Rize," he mumbled, and Yamori loomed overhead, humming happily with pincers in hand. "Ah, you're too noisy again. Shh..."

His tongue was detached, ripped out, and when Yamori taunted him with it, his stomach growled. The saliva forming at the corners of his mouth only added to the sight; a pathetic broken doll, groveling for permission to defile his own self. And this made the monster laugh and laugh and laugh, even as tears mingled with drool and blood filled his mouth.

_Who really is the monster?_

"Shh, dull creature, turn around. Look back."

Kaneki sat, like the most ridiculous of jesters, and watched uncomprehendingly as a needle the size of heaven pierced his eye, jabbing down, and his screams filled the dome.

_Count down from 1000 by 75. Recite the numbers out loud. _

And for each number, a limb wrenched away, the pliers and tools cutting through his soft body like butter, and he bucked and writhed in the chair until his voice gave out, and there he was. _Cling to the numbers. Climb away, away..._

While he was still Kaneki and not a hideous mutation lurking between the worlds, he had had hope, which died as surely as the bucket of his own fingers and toes and tongue and ears filled.

"Why not try something new today, Kaneki?" And suddenly, fingers grubbed around his eye socket, suddenly empty eye socket, and all the pain of his humanity poured down onto him, and he screamed until his throat cracked and he choked on his own blood, swallowing it as if it were from the fountain of youth, vomiting it back up in a red splat on the floor. Wordless, horrible.

"Music to my ears," sang Rize, twirling in front of him. "Seriously, are you that weak that you will reject your only sustenance?" And he gritted his teeth and insisted on the pitiful weak dream of humanity.

"Time to eat again, Kaneki." He opened his mouth like a baby bird, feeling the tingling horror of his limbs regrowing. It itched and stung quite a bit, but his attention was on his own severed fingers and toes. He wanted to suck the marrow from his bones, to strip them of flesh, to eat eat eat eat _eateatEATEATEATEATEAT_ _  
_

Tears mixed with saliva and blood, a potent potion that would forever remind him of hell. _You truly are a monster now. _And inside his head, he screamed the most desperately broken laughter the world would never hear.

Yamori's tongue hung past his teeth, which gnashed in a ravenous melody, and his eyes were frenzied and frantic and smiling. "Ah, I want to kill him I gotta kill him but no no no if he dies I'll be bored what a weakling of a toy how pathetic _pathetic_ I'll just be bored again but he smells so _fresh so __good I want to kill him_ but I can't, yeah, I can't, I can't, kill him _kill him KILL HIM_ AH but I _can't_, use self control, Nico get your ass over here."

And the tall thin ghoul sashayed over, only to be impaled most brutally. The claws and the hardened Rc and whatever sort of upgrade he cannibalizedto himself burst all the way through his back, and Nico doubled over, breathing "Ooh, that is exquisite." For Yamori, see, even while in the grips of his dark deep madness, had enough sense not to ruin the toy he'd worked so long and hard for. And Nico's exposed organs unspooled and re-raveled, and he felt his mouth filling with saliva at the sight of them.

He watched the intestines pick themselves back up, hanging limp like wet noodles, and a whine escaped his closed teeth as he watched, desperate, absolutely sure he was going to die right then and there if he wasn't fed.

_Loser, loser,__ sang the bird in his memory. Yomo crouched down and studied it intently, and said, "How about Shooting Star Wing?"_

_Loser, loser._

Time for another round! sang Yamori, or was it Rize? Turn again and again, look, Hide runs towards him up the street. And the big ghoul loved to talk during his work, babbling out a tossed salad of words. "Do you know why I love this pain?" purred the man, almost intoxicated from his victim's screams.

"Have mercy," he tried to whisper, his still-regrowing tongue a mass of salty flesh and sweet, sweet meat.

"Ah, mercy!" Yamori was delighted. "By your human's standards, what is mercy? Shall I offer you the mercy the 23rd inspector offered me?" And his mouth vomited a jumbled salad of words that caught up in the air currents around him, and he lolled back in the darkness in the center of his mind.

A hot, narrow warmth that wriggled and squirmed, clacking large mandibles in Yamori's hand. "Have you heard of this? This is the Chinese Red-headed centipede." The creature wriggled and wormed, and indeed its head was bright read, like that of a match. Yellow legs twitched violently along its black length. Antennae twitched, sensing him, sensing _meat._

"I'll try putting him in your ear, all right?"

"I can't please no please mercy please I'll do anything _anything_ anything I can't do this I please can't I no no no no no stop I don't want it-" All his words tumbled out in one long exclamation, and Yamori merely smiled. "_But I do._"

There was a rustling feeling, a stunning, brilliant pain that flowered, and then tape was wrapped around his head and even as he writhed and screamed and begged for mercy, he heard far-off laughter. _Whose?_

_Who are you? Why, no one but myself, and you?_ Gleaming mandibles chewed through gray matter, grinding it up and absorbing it, and the entity in the chair was overcome with a fit of giggles, his currently fingerless hands curled into futile fists as he fell to the ground and beat against his head, beating the insect that clacked and clanked among his most precious sanctuary. _This mind, yes, this one mind, and whose is it? Mine? Does it belong to Yamori? Who owns his body, his, he, she, me mine? Who? _

The mind is a temple, and it had been degraded and defaced, the monks lying dead and dying in a pool of their own blood. The signs burned, the world ended in a great blaze of fire.

_My own laughter? Is that what the sounds are? Yes, that is me, hello, who are you? Why, no one but myself. Ha. Haha. Isn't it grand, what a world we live in?_

"Kill me," whispered Kaneki through cracked lips, and the centipede was briefly visible as a wriggling line in the back of his throat.

"...live beautifully, or live for beautiful people?"

_Who was that? A person? A guess, a wisp, a girl who doesn't exist. Mother?_

"Mother?" he whispered, lips jerking around like puppets, and there's a crows bark. "Ah! Ha ha, he called me mother! Oh, the _humanity_." Nico's voice faded in and out, and he felt the skittering horror; with nerves firing off like a damp circuit box, the centipede, out through his socket and back through his other ear-

Mandibles chewed, drilled, _Gourmet's drill, remember how he devoured himself so he could in turn devour you? How delightful, isn't it? _And his mind was shot full of holes. The monks weren't even dead anymore, they were eviscerated, impaled, he could hear them screaming. _Me, you, she, mother, who? Who is it that owns me? _Get out. Get out. _Kill me._

In response, another toe was chopped off.

The bound monster's mouth opened wide.

A finger, with the joints stretched out of alignment, taped backwards on the palm, bent to extreme lengths.

His jaw cracked for the umpteenth time as he keened.

"Sooner or later your bones will fall out, and then it'll be dinner time once more!" Yamori crooned in his ear, and already with that statement his mind, while aimlessly crunching numbers, was fixated on the fraying, sliding feeling of his finger - or was that his sanity? It all tasted the same. Straight or not, crooked skies in a crooked world.

"I will see you later." Dry lizard lips reeking of the fragrance of flesh, and the monster found his mouth watering again.

_Warped, right? Yes, the world is a mental asylum. Ha. No names for me, no, I gave up Kaneki when I was stupid enough to notice the girl in the coffeeshop. Stupid, stupid little boy, think you can control the world? Think you can face society again?_

Yamori didn't come back. Neither did Nico. Or anyone, really. None of the Aogiri ghouls.

The room was silent but for the contemplative munching of the centipede in his ear, the muted, gurgling rasp of his breath forcing itself through blood-clotted pipes.

_I'm hungry._

His eye was burning, burning black, the veins of red nearly popping out of his skull.

_I need to eat, to eat, to eat, I need to EAT, kill me. Kill me, eat me, I need to kill me? _In increasingly frantic circles, his thoughts spun screeching and howling, and at some point the Rc suppressing-injection wore off. His fingers and toes sprouted again, his tongue no longer a ragged stump flapping. The tunnels carved into his brain began to reform, and the centipede gorged itself.

His teeth sank deep into the meat of his mouth. The beautiful rusting flavor trickled down his throat, and he moaned in anticipation, saliva forming at his bleeding lips. _Eat._

He tore at the flesh of his mouth, barely stopping to chew, and either the Rc cells were still slow to recover, or his own spit acted as a blotter for his wounds, and there were gaping empty patches in his cheeks, his teeth cracked and stained and delicious. The skin was torn off his face in places, anything and everything he could reach pushed down his empty, growling gullet.

He laughed as he ate, and faint screams bounced inside his head. Or outside, perhaps, from the exterior doors.

(_A boy with needle and thread satiated his lust. A quinque at last._)

"Aren't you hungry?" whispered Rize, caressing his ruined face, and he snapped at her fingers hard enough to make his mind rattle. "Silly boy, you want to hide," she whispered, and the door banged open as he was thinking about telling her to _shut up_, let me eat you, suck the juice off your bones, woman. But he had no tongue, that rotted in his stomach, and the buckets of dislocated body parts at his feet was enticing enough to make him scream.

"About time," said Toka in a businesslike fashion, striding to the boy-creature slumped in the chair. "You could've helped us out while looking for you."

"Toka?" thought the alien boy as hard as he could, but she shimmered and transformed into Rize, who was laughing wildly. "Ah, I sure fooled you. Stupid thing, don't you know they're all dead?"

"I am too," he managed with the flap of slowly regenerating muscle serving as a tongue. "Can't you tell?"

And as Rize started to smile, the ghoul opened his mouth as wide as a snake's and howled. It was a completely inhuman noise, and as if laughing with him, the centipede bit again, squirmed from the wreckage of a brilliant mind out of his ear canal and set in on his eye, and that pain too was delicious. His scream increased in pitch, leaping up note after note in a crazy step-footed dance.

He loved the sound of it.


End file.
